Well, all has changed today after Nokia have officially acknowledged that the handset will be further delayed. The markets that were expecting it in September will get it in October. As for the countries where it wasn’t supposed to launch in September, who knows… At this rate, they can probably expect it in December.

Nokia are trying to (at least in part) blame this on the supposed record level of pre-orders they’ve had for the N8 (which they have said was the largest for any Nokia device ever). They also say they are in the process of making “some final amends”. Translation? Probably a show-stopping bug somewhere. They clearly don’t want to repeat the N97 fiasco and ship a bug-ridden device, but the fact that they’ve discovered this so late is staggering.

Here’s the full statement:

“The amount of preorders has exceeded our expectations and we are working hard to deliver the Nokia N8 to the market. In some markets, we had planned to start delivering the Nokia N8s to our pre-order customers by the end of September. To ensure a great user experience, we have decided to hold the shipments for a few weeks to do some final amends. We’re thrilled with the response that we’ve had to the Nokia N8 and assure everyone who’ve pre-ordered it already that it’ll be worth the wait! We expect consumers to get their Nokia N8s during October.”

Do note the language. They “expect” to ship it in October. Which kind of leaves the door open for another delay. Let’s hope that won’t happen.

Also, as I hinted before, this probably means that “general availability” for the N8 will happen sometime in late November or early December. Almost eight months after the announcement. I sure hope Nokia’s new CEO can put an end to this practice of announcing early and releasing late. It certainly does nothing to help Nokia’s image right now.